Belfast Girls Read online

  “Move it, mister!” he said. He dragged Speers forcefully to one side, the weapon poking him hard in the chest.

  A second man gestured roughly with his gun in the general direction of Sheila.

  “You!” he said harshly. “Yes, you with the red hair! Get over here!”

  Chapter Two

  1993

  There were so many things about her life that Sheila Doherty hated, especially her appearance, her skinniness and her hair, which was a very bright red. She was eight, and just beginning to notice boys. She knew how important it was that other people should think she looked good, and how impossible. How awful it was to be called ‘Ginger’, to be considered too tall, too thin, too ugly. She hated being called after in the streets, and in the school playground.

  When church, Sunday dinner and Sunday school were over, Sheila wandered out into the back garden. Boredom attacked her.

  The back garden was not very large and there was nothing much to do there. There was a square of grass, a border bright with flowers in spring and summer, but mostly brown or green on this dull October afternoon, and an empty rabbit hutch against the far wall.

  Sheila could vaguely remember the rabbit, a furry, cuddly focus of love a few years ago when she was five or six, and her short but violent grief at his unexplained death from some unidentified rabbit disease.

  She mooched over the grass, kicking aimlessly at the few still remaining fallen leaves, and leaned against the wizened old apple tree in the corner near the hutch. Although she was not to leave the garden or go out into the street by herself, it was good for her to be out in the fresh air, her mother said. It might give her a bit more colour.

  Sheila’s pale skin and red hair, from her father Frank’s side of the family, were a source of constant irritation to both Sheila and her mother Kathy. Both would have preferred almost any other combination, but particularly the dark hair and blue eyes for which Kathy had been so widely admired in her youth – as she often told Sheila with some complacency.

  Sheila kicked a few more leaves and wished something would happen. If only she had a sister, or even a brother. It would be fun to have someone to play with.

  Suddenly a large ball thudded at her feet.

  Sheila jumped and said, “Sugar!” Then she blushed, for she didn’t often use what Kathy would call bad language. She picked up the ball and stood with it in her hands, looking cautiously around.

  It seemed to have come over the wall which ran between her family’s garden and the house next door.

  She watched. Two hands were gripping hard on the top of the wall. Then a head rose slowly above the edge.

  Black curly hair, blue eyes wide open in inquiry, a mouth which broke into a friendly grin as its owner saw Sheila.

  “Hi. Can I come and get my ball?”

  Sheila nodded silently.

  The girl scrambled over the wall, leaving muddy smears on her light blue jeans as she did so. She advanced on Sheila and took the ball which Sheila held out to her.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Sheila. What’s yours?”

  “Philomena Mary Maguire, but I get called Phil.”

  They looked at each other steadily for a moment. Then Phil again took the initiative.

  “We’ve come to live next door, here. We moved in yesterday. Is this your house?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s it like, here? Mammy said it would be fun to have a garden. Is it? Do you like it?”

  Sheila had never thought about it. She had always had a garden. Didn’t everybody?

  “Let’s play with your football,” she said.

  “Okay.” Phil looked back. Another head had risen above the wall. Brown hair, not as dark as Phil’s, grey eyes, a round freckled face with a friendly grin.

  “This is my brother Gerry,” said Phil. “Can he come over, too?”

  “Yes, g-great!” stammered Sheila.

  A moment later, Gerry, who was obviously a year or so older than Phil but still small for his age, had scrambled over the wall and given the football a vigorous kick, only just missing Kathy’s favourite rosebush. Sheila giggled. This was going to be fun.

  They played happily together for the rest of the afternoon. Phil and Gerry were inclined to take the lead and to suggest new games.

  Sheila didn’t mind. It was interesting. Phil was fascinated by the rabbit hutch and the apple tree. She made Sheila see the back garden with new eyes, as an exciting place of endless possibilities.

  “We could make a swing from the tree if we had some rope,” Gerry suggested enthusiastically. “We could use the clothes line.”

  “I don’t think my mammy would let me –” Sheila began.

  But he had already pulled down the line and was starting to tie it to the tree. So Sheila and Phil joined in and helped him. It was great.

  The afternoon whizzed by, and there was Sheila’s mother, woken up from her Sunday afternoon nap, calling Sheila already for her tea.

  “I won’t be allowed out after tea,” Sheila said. “It’ll be too dark. Maybe I’ll see you at school tomorrow?”

  “St Columba’s, mine’s called,” said Phil. “I won’t know anybody yet, so it’d be nice if you were there.”

  Sheila was disappointed. “I go to Alexander Primary, so I won’t see you. But we could play after school?” she suggested hopefully.

  “Okay,” said Phil. “See you, then.”

  She and Gerry scrambled back over the wall and Sheila went in. St Columba’s was the nearby Catholic primary school, she knew. Alexander Primary was Protestant. She thought maybe she wouldn’t mention her new friends to her mother, just yet, though Kathy would have to know sometime that the new neighbours were Catholic.

  From then on Sheila and Phil were inseparable.

  Gerry was a good friend too, but he had his own mates to hang around with usually and, as they all got older, it was only occasionally that he would join in with Phil and Sheila’s games. After all, they were only girls.

  It was Phil who stood up for Sheila now when people called her ‘Ginger’, or ‘Carrots’, and made fun of her.

  “You leave her alone or I’ll twist your elephant ears off!” she ordered Chrissie Murphy when she tried to pull Sheila’s hair.

  And, “Leave off my mate or I’ll get my big brother to give you such a hidin’!” when Sandy Bell was teasing Sheila more than usual.

  Occasionally Sheila would turn to Gerry to help her and the ‘big brother’ would soon deal with any persistent trouble makers, going so far as to punch big Geordie Patterson in the eye on one memorable occasion.

  When they moved on to secondary school, although they were still separated during the school day, their friendship remained strong.

  It was against all the rules, they knew, vaguely, for a Catholic and a Protestant to be best friends but, thought Sheila and Phil, who cared?

  Chapter Three

  The week leading up to the Twelfth of July celebrations was always an exciting one. School was over for the summer. Everyone was out collecting wood and cast off furniture for the bonfire. Sheila and Phil collected together.

  Phil’s brother Gerry was particularly enthusiastic. He and his mates dragged an old sofa and chairs, which Mrs Fagan was throwing out, the whole length of the street to the green patch at the end where the bonfire was to be. Gerry was thirteen by now, more than a year older than Sheila and Phil, but still small for his age, so it was quite a feat.

  All the children of the neighbourhood joined forces for the collecting. As the pile grew, they boasted happily to each other that their bonfire would be heaps bigger than the ones in the nearby areas. Not every street would have a bonfire. A number of streets would work together, the arrangement springing up naturally among children who normally played together.

  Sheila and Phil were still best friends. They had been playing together after school for nearly four years, now. They had other friends, mostly from their own neighbourhood, and some from school, but non
e of them were so close. Although they could not help being aware, more so as they grew older, that the religious difference seemed important to some people, they and their friends thought very little about it. Phil and her family were Catholic, Sheila and her family were Protestant. So what?

  The Twelfth of July celebration was something which had little meaning to them except as an excuse for a bonfire.

  On the evening of the eleventh night, Sheila, Phil, Mary Branagh from Phil’s school, and Jeanie and Margaret Gillespie from a few houses away, sat along the wall beside the bonfire. Time hung heavily on their hands. The bonfire was ready. There was nothing more to be done. The older teenagers had decreed that it was not to be lit until dark. In July, dark would not be for several more hours.

  “Are you going to see the parade tomorrow, Sheila?” Jeanie asked. “My daddy will be walking with his Lodge, and mammy’s taking me and our Margaret down to Carlisle Circus to watch them set out.”

  “I expect so.” Sheila was vague. She was used to getting up early and going with Kathy to see the parade, but this year apparently her daddy, Frank, was not walking. He had made various remarks to Kathy about not wanting to be part of it any more, which Sheila had only half listened to, or understood. Kathy hadn’t been pleased, she knew that much.

  If Daddy wasn’t walking, was it worth the effort of getting up early on a holiday morning, just to see the other men? And would Mammy be planning to go, anyway? Sheila had no intention of going by herself.

  She told Jeanie none of this, however. It was a family matter and no-one else’s business.

  “Let’s go round and see the other bonfires, see if any of them are as big as ours,” suggested Mary Branagh. Mary never liked sitting doing nothing.

  This was hailed as a great idea.

  “The only thing is perhaps we should get some of the boys to come with us, in case there are any roughs hanging about?” suggested Margaret.

  “Okay, why not?” said Phil. “There’s our Gerry and his mates over there, I’ll ask them.” She scrambled up onto the wall and waved vigorously. “Gerry! Gerry! Do you and Danny and Tommy fancy coming round with us to see the other bonfires?”

  Gerry, who had recently developed quite an interest in Sheila, though he wasn’t prepared to admit it yet, agreed readily.

  “Good idea. C’mon then, kids.”

  “Do you think we should tell our mammy where we’re going?” asked Jeanie doubtfully. The youngest of the group, she was less independent than the rest.

  “Not when we have the boys with us, stupid,” said her big sister Margaret. “We’ll be okay.”

  Gerry and his mates sauntered over.

  “You’re getting bigger every time I see you, Sheila,” Gerry said, grinning.

  Sheila was embarrassed.

  “It’s these new shoes I’m wearing with the block heels,” she muttered.

  “It’s not your height I meant, Sheila!”

  “Oh!”

  Sheila’s face was scarlet.

  "Come on," interrupted Phil briskly, "let's get on for goodness sake!"

  They trooped off happily, chattering, laughing, and pushing each other off the edge of the kerb in their normal manner.

  The nearest bonfire was satisfactorily small compared to their own. They hung around for a while chatting with the local kids who were mostly familiar faces, if not friends. Then they moved on.

  They had gone much further afield and visited a number of bonfires by the time darkness began to fall.

  "I think we should go back," said Jeanie. Her voice sounded nervous. “This is what our mammy calls 'the back streets', and I don't think she would like me and our Margaret to go here, if she knew."

  “Aw, come on,” scoffed Tommy Watson, who was in the form above Margaret and Sheila at school, and qualified as a 'big boy’. “Look, there's one down that street over there, I bet it's a giant. And look, it’s lit! You can hear them shouting and singing round it - listen!”

  Raucous singing and shouting were coming from the entrance to a narrow street leading off the main road. Curiosity led them to approach nearer. An enormous bonfire was piled against the gable end of the house furthest away. Flames erupted from it, and round it a horde of people, adults as well as children, were dancing and singing. Many of the adults were waving cans and bottles from which they slurped noisily between bursts of song and shouts.

  The children were fascinated. As they came nearer, a cheer went up. Someone started up a new song.

  “It is old but it is beautiful

  And its colours they are fine!

  It was worn at Derry, Aughrim,

  Enniskillen and the Boyne!

  Oh, my father wore it as a youth,

  In bygone days of yore,

  And on the Twelfth I love to wear

  The sash my father wore!”

  “They're singing ‘The Sash!’” whispered Gerry Maguire to his sister “What's ‘The Sash’?” asked Phil innocently. “Hush!” said Gerry, who was beginning to feel a little uneasy.

  The crowd round the bonfire came to the end of the verse and added their own unofficial chorus.

  “Valdaree, fuck the Pope,

  Valdara, fuck the Pope,

  The sash my father wore!”

  “What are they saying about the Pope?” Phil asked.

  The singing and shouting continued and the language grew more uncontrolled.

  Phil looked at Sheila. There were tears in her blue eyes. Then she burst out, far too loudly, “Why are they saying those things about the Pope? The Pope's a good man – why don't they like him?”

  Sheila didn’t know what to say.

  A woman who had been among the most uncontrolled of the crowd, turned round and looked at Phil.

  “Ho, what have we got here?” she mocked. “Listen here, Billy, it’s a wee fenian bitch, so it is!”

  The man beside her, Billy, was big, red faced, and very drunk. It took him a few moments to take in what the woman was saying.

  “A wee fenian bitch, Billy! A pope lover!” she screeched again. “Get her, Billy! Teach her a lesson!”

  The man called Billy lumbered forward. To the horror of her companions, he seized Phil by the slack of her T-shirt and swung her up in the air dangerously near to the bonfire.

  “How’s about a taste of hellfire, wee fenian?” he roared. “Give you some idea of where you’re heading for?”

  He laughed loudly and swung Phil through the air, nearer and nearer to the flames.

  Sheila heard the terrifying sound of clothes ripping.

  Gerry and Tommy and Danny simultaneously rushed forward and lunged themselves against the big man, punching and pummelling him, kicking his shins, wasting breath in calling him names Sheila had never heard before.

  Sheila found herself rushing forward, too, kicking the big man’s legs, biting his bare, tattooed arms fiercely. “Let go of her! Let go of her!” she screamed. Mary Branagh followed, punching the man from the other side. Sheila could hear the woman who had urged Billy on laugh contemptuously.

  Suddenly it was all over.

  Billy, staggering partly from whiskey and partly from the attack, let go of Phil, luckily at a point in his swing where she was well away from the fire. Phil landed in a heap on the ground. Sheila grabbed her by one hand and hauled her to her feet. Mary seized Phil’s other arm.

  “Come on!” Mary panted briefly.

  They pelted at top speed away down the street and round the nearest corner. Gerry and the other two, giving up their attack, had the sense to follow on the girls’ heels.

  Jeanie and Margaret had already gone. Sheila and Phil and Mary, and the boys, found them lurking far down the next alleyway. With one accord, they hurried for home.

  Phil was very silent.

  “Pay no attention, Phil,” said Margaret, primly. “Only people like that, roughs from the back streets, would behave that way.”

  But lots of other people think the same sort of thing, even if they don't say it or ac
t on it, thought Sheila. She took Phil's hand and gave it a little squeeze.

  “Let’s go and get our own bonfire lit,” said Gerry. He had been much angrier than his sister at the attitude of the crowd, but had no inclination to cry. He could understand, he thought, how people took up the gun against men like that – though the woman had been worse. If he had been older ...

  They went back to their own bonfire and lit it, and afterwards roasted potatoes in the embers, but it wasn't as much fun as it had been last year.

  Sheila knew all about the boring Troubles which had been going on for years and which had never really affected her, living in one of the safe areas of Belfast, but this was the first time she had really noticed at first hand how much was wrong with her country.

  Chapter Four

  Phil and Sheila continued to be close on through secondary school and shared secrets which they told to no-one else. Together they cautiously experimented with cigarettes and helped each other with homework.

  Sheila would say to Phil over the garden wall “I've got something to show you when you're round, Phil.”

  The something would be a pale, pink, frosted lipstick which Sheila had bought out of her pocket money, unknown to Kathy. To her mother’s mind, Sheila was still much too young for make-up, but Sheila and Phil saw the question differently. Anything that could be spared from their scanty pocket money went on lipstick, mascara, or eye shadow, and they practised putting on the various items in each other’s bedrooms after school.

  On all social occasions now they would wear make-up if they possibly could, and this usually involved a great deal of secrecy, slipping out of their houses and back in without being seen, or else putting on lipstick after they were out of sight of home.

  As they reached their middle teens, when they got together after school or at the weekends it was to grumble about the amount of homework they had to do, with GCSEs coming up, and, more and more, to talk about boys.

  Phil was very popular. She could have had her pick of most of the boys of their own age who were attracted as much by her lively personality as by her pretty face. But Phil had written them all off and was only interested in older boys. Sheila still had no boyfriends. She wished she was as pretty as Phil and envied her, but still felt happy, even privileged, to have Phil for her friend.